posted at 5:33 pm on September 11, 2007 by see-dubya

You folks remember “Islamic Rage Boy“, yes? Potfry and Buckley F. Williams are the bloggers (at The Nose on Your Face) who first distilled the wild-eyed wire-service photos of professional Kashmiri protestor Shakeel Bhat into the ultimate cariacature of militant Islamism. A cariacature so spot-on that it even provoked CAIR frump-in-chief Ibrahim Hooper to debate Potfry on BBC radio. They decided to protect their intellectual property, so in addition to a copyright, they decided to apply to have the image trademarked as well.

The patent office told them no, because IRB is “disparaging”. And as is meet, right, and the bounden duty of any conservative humor blogger confronted with government bureuacracy, Potfry fisked the Patent Office’s rejection. Sample? Sure–under fair use, of course:

Indeed, Al-Qaeda’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahri threatened Americans by stating “You are facing the Islamic rage“ (if you insist on making our points for us, the least you could do is approve the trademark.). Here, applicant’s mark essentially creates that very offensive image of grouping all Muslims as terrorists (are you responding to our request for the trademark of “Islamic Rage Boy” or the lesser known “Islamic ‘Every Single Muslim Is A Bloodthirsty Killer’ Rage Boy”? Because we withdrew that one last year.). Indeed (again with the “indeed”, I think you might be hearing from Glenn Reynolds’ attorney.) there are millions of Muslims the world over who are living peaceful lives and have a great love of their religion (and there are a great many people – Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus et al- who are no longer living because of the fascist beliefs and murderous acts of Muslim extremists. Tell me again why we can’t make fun of them?). Accordingly, it is wholly inaccurate and offensive to label all male Muslims as being extremists (Fair enough, but based on my experience so far it seems perfectly reasonable to label all patent attorneys “politically-correct, mincing douchebags”) .

Now, I’m not a patent lawyer, and I don’t know whether the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office did its job right or not.

All I know is that it’s kind of funny that “Islamic Rage Boy” gets pooped on by the PC police for being “disparaging”, but “EVILCHRISTIANS” is a registered trademark, defended by the might of the United States Government.

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You can search the database of the USPTO here to see what other trademarks they’ve granted. (Note–granted; many of the items in the database are unsuccessful or pending applications. Check the “TARR” history to see the status of each application.) I found EvilChristians in two minutes. So, Exit Question: What else will the blogosphere uncover there?

UPDATE: Allahpundit will be pleased to learn that the “Jew Watch” moron who infests You Tube got his trademark application rejected. Good call.

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Thats interesting. I wonder if the patent office would grant the EVILISLAMICS trademark? There would be no better measure of their supposed bias then using the exact same word structure as EVILCHRISTIANS and then seeing how they react. I think we all know how that would turn out but it would be interesting to see it in its most obvious form.

Also, if anybody had the desire to fight it, using the same exact word structure might make for a pretty solid legal case.

So I go to uspto.gov to try a search or two, click in the field to start typing. Thanks to the magic of ajax, it comes up with a list of previous searches that other people have done. It’s all “evil jews” “kill jews” … and on and on. You people have been busy!

All I know is that it’s kind of funny that “Islamic Rage Boy” gets pooped on by the PC police for being “disparaging”, but “EVILCHRISTIANS” is a registered trademark, defended by the might of the United States Government.

Not to agree with the patent people here, since I don’t actually agree with them, but I don’t think “evil Christians” is necessarily disparaging against Christians any more than “evil people” disparages against people.

I don’t see how “Islamic Rage Boy” disparages against Islam either, except that Islamic Rage Boy is filled with Islamic rage, which is a little different from being evil and a Christian. The two words are more connected, since Islamic describes the rage instead of the boy.

Again, I’m not saying I agree with the patent people and sincerely believe they’re being completely stupid here, but I do see how someone could see a difference if someone were trying to do so.

Well, there you have it, people. Christoph works for the patent office. First he denied any double stand existed, he denied any wrong doing on the part of the patent office, but now that the double standard and bias is exposed, his only wiseguy retort? “Evil Christians, indeed”.

As I mentioned in the headline thread of this same topic, this guy needs to come up with a patentably distinct action figure that he could call The Islamic Rage Boy Action Figure. The USPTO would not be able to refuse to grant a patent on the same grounds that it refused the trademark.

Heh heh heh I just heard that Lassie was headed over to have a little chat with your collie, your collie better have plenty of cold beer and a damn good explanation for that last suggestion otherwise Timmy might not be the one being reported down the well this time…

Heh heh heh I just heard that Lassie was headed over to have a little chat with your collie, your collie better have plenty of cold beer and a damn good explanation for that last suggestion otherwise Timmy might not be the one being reported down the well this time…

None of the US Patent & Trademark Office office actions (rejections) for this mark concerned it being ‘immoral or scandalous’ (a legitimate reason for denying registration), but concerned it being registered as ‘evilchristians’ while the specimins provided read ‘evilchristians promotions’.

For a serious trademark challenge, it would have to be “EvilMuslims“, not evil “Islamics“, since the followers are not called that, but “Muslims“.

It costs about $650 to get a trademark, and takes about 6 – 12 months, if it is a simple mark.

(I have one, and it was a fairly straightforward process, done without a lawyer, both online and with two snail-mail letters …to clarify a typeface and its color and to prove that the item was on sale and in production.)

If I had the spare $650, I’d go for EVILMUSLIMS as a test case.

If you put the logo/image “ISLAMIC RAGE BOY” on a T-shirt, print up samples, and try to trademark it that way, it might work better.